


In Aftermath

by forcefields



Category: Fantastic Four (2015)
Genre: F/M, alternative universe-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 13:08:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11403054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forcefields/pseuds/forcefields
Summary: “Did I really break your heart so swiftly?” he asks, the hurt in his tone instilling an unpleasant ache in her chest.“No,” she answers firmly, refusing to allow any aspect of her being to break, “I did that myself.”





	In Aftermath

Patterns. She’s grown near sick of them in this place.

Sue recalls informing Reed that all patterns were different, particularly in songs. The artist makes you wait, anticipate a resolution – unless they happen to be government-branded. In that case, you never receive a resolution at all. Instead, you are met with the constant buzz of an unmoving, low-pitched line, never altering in volume or rhythm, not even giving out the slightest static stagger.

It is, for lack of a better term, boring. If she doesn’t see something other than dark corridors and dark rooms and darker training arenas, Sue fears she’ll lose her mind. She’s surprised – impressed, rather – that she hasn’t lost it at this point. She’s stronger than she used to think she was. She has to be to survive this isolative hell, where every single individual you encounter views you through a metaphorical microscope.

Her aforementioned project partner fled the facility some time before the militia here realised he’d gone. The others involved in the accident, her younger brother by two years, Johnny, and Reed’s poor friend from high school, Ben, have recently been militarised. Yes, militarised – turned into killers, “weapons” as Mr. Allen described. They’ve destroyed things, from houses to tanks, killed people, from militants to probably innocents caught in the crossfire, and they’ve seen what can’t be easily removed from one’s memory. It makes Sue ill when she remembers she could do nothing but watch. Mr. Allen and his fellow government officials claimed what the boys would be doing, would come of their own free will, but that was bullshit of the highest degree. Ben and Johnny do what they do because without such a privilege, they’d still be stuck inside four dull walls as she is.

Sue didn’t curse before she began life in Area 57. It wasn’t because she found the dialogue ‘unladylike’ or lacking in etiquette. She merely deemed it unnecessary. Now? Well, now is a very different story. She is a very different girl – no science prodigy, no normal member of society with basic human rights. She’s an object, a would-be weapon if she desired liberation as hotly as the other two had. She can’t blame them for their feelings, they’re more than understandable and it’s not that she feels indifferent. Rather, she doesn’t want to end up a mindless, mass-murdering, large-scale-destruction-causing tool. Not to say those traits currently possess Ben and Johnny, but they will do soon if she can’t negotiate her way into the outside world.

One thing she knows for definite: the government are rebuilding Reed’s teleportation machine. Not to find a cure for their two-thirds-weaponised, naturally, but to bring back samples of Planet Zero’s matter. Such samples, Sue theorises, will eventually be utilised to power super-weapons, perhaps exoskeletons. Of course, a natural flaw of humanity is wanting more of something we shouldn’t have. America’s got enough going for it; it doesn’t need armies littered with super-soldiers as well.

Sue sits at the desk they provided her – one of their minimal acts of charity – in her quarters, which consists of this furniture piece, a double bed and a bare-bones en-suite. Her desk is piled high with aged books on chemistry, biology, physics, subjects she’s been rehearsed in since the early days of her youth. Subjects they apparently believe she has no clue about. She’d rather be reading Oxford classics, but that would be asking too much. Sue had received enough itching expressions indicating laughter suppression when she’d requested a goddamn desk. Like her self-esteem hadn’t been crippled by recent events already.

Sue sighs a soft, melancholic sound. It drifts briefly in the atmosphere before dissipating, and then she feels the telltale heat in her eyes. Her lashes flutter as her lids seal shut, stopping the floods where they start. She hasn’t cried in a while. She doesn’t want to cry again anytime soon, else it may become a constant, thus she distracts herself, willing her mind to switch to a happy setting, something she extremely lacks nowadays. Yet out of seemingly nowhere, the deepest depths of her brain, Sue conjures an image which causes her heart to flutter a great amount more intense than her lashes.

Two months and two weeks ago, she stood constructing the helmet for the final environment suit in a lonely laboratory. Despite its bland pallet, it had far more colour to offer than Area 57. Occasionally, though she wouldn’t admit to it, her mind wandered and Sue ended up scanning the royal blue walls and white-rimmed, wide-spaced windows surrounding her. Oddly enough, her interest in the hulking machine directly before her was minimal at this time – most likely because she had to have seen it at least sixty times by that stage, both in blueprint and reality.

As her eyes manoeuvred about the pristine white work table, a hand landed on it. A hand that held some recent-looking blueprint, one she couldn’t concentrate on examining when the hand’s owner grasped her utmost attention. “Hello, Susan.”

Her pursed lips popped apart. “Hey, Victor.”

Sue was well-practiced at pretending she held zero interest in the Latverian outcast and scarily talented hacker that the US Government despised. Five years she’d known Victor von Doom and his ridiculous surname, five years she’d been – embarrassingly, relentlessly against her will – head over heels for him. He clearly felt something for her as well, but their relationship would have been unwise. Sue’s eyes rolled beyond the back of her head at the mere mentioning of ‘forbidden love’, yet their situation essentially defined such a tired concept. If she dated him, she’d be blacklisted by the godforsaken government, possibly – and it was a nauseous hypothesis, but she didn’t put it past people such as Mr. Allen – used as leverage against Victor for whatever purpose came to mind in which his skills would come in handy. Either that, or his status behind bars.

Victor hadn’t gotten caught up in the accident. Sue and Johnny’s father, Dr. Franklin Storm, had told her the only time he’d been allowed to visit that Victor naturally started a fight with Mr. Allen following the latter’s announcement that the government would be sending their own men instead of the students into Planet Zero first, which concluded with fisticuffs and an arrest. In present time, Sue spares a moment from the happy memory to wonder if Victor remains residing in prison. A smirk tugs at one corner of her mouth. This is Victor she’s thinking about here – of course he won’t be.

Immersing once again in the memory, Sue doesn’t hear a slight verbal commotion outside. She focuses on what Victor said next. He lingered where he stood, a small distance from the suit maker, and asked her how the “tailoring” was going. She’d smiled, summoning her wits and turning to face him. “Nearly there. How’s the inventing coming along?”

He lifted his shoulders, like he couldn’t have given a care in the world. “Average. Richards remains as unprofessional as ever.”

She gave him a long look, not bothering to hide her amused smirk, and lifted the oversized goggles from her eyes. They sat on top of her head, digging in comfortably. “Are you still hung up over him flirting with me?”

Envy sparked in Victor’s copper irises. His lower jaw tightened sharply, his forehead creased and brows consequently furrowed. She’d struck a nerve – not that she hadn’t intended to. “I didn’t realise Richards had reached that level of discord.” He paused, the smallest hesitation in him. An uncommon thing for Victor, Sue noted. “Did he make you feel uncomfortable? I can report him to Franklin, if you’re –”

“No,” she shut him down swiftly, “it was fine – nice, actually.”

A sculpted eyebrow perked. “‘Nice’?”

Sue’s smirk widened, and she nodded, turning back to her half-developed helmet. “You should try it some time. Maybe you’ll score better than ‘nice’.”

Facing the helmet, staring into the gap where a head would go, was a grand deterrent to blushing as opposed to Victor’s probable shocked expression. Regardless, she couldn’t help envisioning it – a mix between mirth, surprise and intrigue. That sculpted eyebrow was undoubtedly arching even higher.

She’d expected a verbal approach. When his right hand caught her by the forearm, strands of blonde batted against her cheeks, a result of Sue’s head whirling around to stare wide-eyed at him. He craned his neck down a few degrees, mouth a marginal distance from hers. He spoke at last through a breathy whisper. “I prefer a more direct show of interest.”

Yet he didn’t “show”. He waited - anticipating two probable outcomes, Sue supposed, barely breathing in the abruptly altered conditions. Her eyes fell shut, and flung open twice as fast. Steadying the shake trying dominance in her vocal chords, she composed an adequate phrase for consent. “Care to show it?”

She saw another spark within him when his lips landed on hers. Her eyes weren’t open, but they didn’t have to be. The spark was solely visible in the sense that it was shared exclusively between them. She kissed him back softly, detecting he was holding back, and began to apply a certain vigour of encouragement. Sadly, as he reciprocated her heightened desire to deepen their embrace, someone walked into the lab and chose - rather than to walk out and leave them in peace - to clear his throat.

Sue delivered Johnny a glare equal to Victor’s. Her bothersome brother shrugged it off, caught between acting disgusted and erupting with laughter. “Was I interrupting something here? Not that I care – not that you should tell me at all, okay, ‘cause I ate, like, two seconds ago – but I thought you guys should know.” He folded his arms across his chest and gave himself an approving nod. “We finished the gate.”

Her mind trickles back to the present, holding onto the distinct feel of Victor’s fingers ghosting her left knuckle until it becomes numbing. Then, she lets it go, ready to revisit it another time. Her first kiss, her first love, swept out from under in an instant. Would they ever meet again?

Sue bites her bottom lip, mentally scolding herself for thinking such a thing. They will, yes, they will, in time. However long ‘time’ decides to take, she’ll wait it out. She won’t submit to being weaponised. She won’t lose her head. A heavy fog better at invisibility than she is hangs over her; she can’t permit its rule over her rationalisation. She will get through this – she will see the outside world as a regular person again.

She’s disrupted from her steadily intoxicating, runaway brain by muffled voices outside her quarters. Turning her head from the desk to the double-doors, wide-eyed, Sue pushes her gloved hands against her chair’s armrests and stands. Silently stepping towards the doors, she tries to hone in on the heated conversation.

That’s when she hears it – his voice.

Victor. 

“What is this, a prison?”

“Sir, please, the radiation could be -”

“Just let me see her!”

Sue’s breath catches in her throat. Victor’s sigh emerges sounding like a small wisp of wind, clearly taking on a calmer mindset than she currently is. “Please. I’ll be gone before your boss finds out.”

“Five minutes,” the female voice responds after a drawn-out pause, “that’s all you’ve got.”

Victor doesn’t pause. Hesitation was never coded into his nature. “That’s all I need.”

Sue isn’t quite certain what to do next – dash to her bed and feign sleep, or stand stock-still and see him for the first time in far too long? Before she can make a relatively informed decision, the latter occurs, and he stands in the doorway as statute as her, looking...awful. Undoubtedly the man she loves, but not the man he’d always presented to her. This man is very much removed from the carefully-constructed image she’d become familiar with.

He speaks first, hands at his sides moving minimally. “Hey.”

She stares momentarily, continuing to be strain merely by his presence, by the sheer unlikelihood she’d just acknowledged about them ever seeing each other.

“Susan?” He steps forward, face etched with concern. “What did they do to you?”

“Nothing.” Sue jolts out a little too hastily, coming into reality via verbal crash landing, “I’m fine, Victor. They haven’t touched me, aside from having to lift and transport my body from Baxter...” She trails off, swallowing a massive lump in her throat, and her eyes hit the squeaky clean floor. There’s nothing to scan here, nothing to distract Sue from Victor’s ever-growing anxiety for her wellbeing.

“Why?” he asks in a sombre tone, “Why did you go along with it, Susan?”

“It felt like the right thing to do,” she replies, gaze staying put, “to avenge our little victory lost.”

The steel toecaps of his black boots reach the leather ones of her plimsolls. His voice drops to an intimate whisper, and he asks a question which forces her head up, both of them hardly holding back tears: “Why didn’t you call?”

She attempts to jest, but cannot keep her voice from cracking. “Thought you’d be busy enough bailing yourself out of jail.” Pausing, she shakes her head, re-evaluates her dialogue decisions and tries again, looking him right in the eyes. “I don’t know why. Guess it wasn’t in the cards that night – I was so overwhelmed by the excitement of seeing Planet Zero in-person, all that mattered was - getting there.” She shrugs, sighs breathily, his hurting expression about to break her stability. “Please. Please don’t think I forgot about you. For the entire brief time we were out there, I could picture your reactions. And that was my incentive to start taking photographs – ones recovered, but kept under governmental wrap and shown to God knows how many people, when the exact number of individuals who should’ve seen them is one.”

Anger pulsates off Sue in waves, the explanation having sprung from her vocal chords no different to how the back half of some decoupled train carriages would shoot off unsteady tracks. She abruptly interests herself with the floor, her cheeks burning burgundy – a response she would have been able to suppress before the incident. She considers carefully turning the shade invisible. His words scrap the decision before she makes it. “You took photographs? On your phone?”

She eyes him, confused, not quite understanding his awe yet. “Yes?”

“Susan, this is brilliant.” Victor says, grinning, a common rarity for the Latverian. “If I can locate and retrieve that phone, get the pictures on the net - they’ll have no choice but to let you go free. You and the others, you’ll be seen as heroes, pioneers of a new scientific age, the types of people who can’t stay caged up.”

It’s a wild idea. No, scratch that, it’s an insane proposal, but Sue knows better than anyone that Victor is insane – to a degree, as far as she’s concerned, anyway – enough to pull it off. Still, the scenario of being let down isn’t unfamiliar to her. She shifts her standing position so that her feet are firmly fixed against one another and her arms are folded tight across her chest. “You really think you could do that? Security’s –”

He scoffs, waving off her suggestion before she has a chance to speak it. “‘Security’? If you think security’s gonna’ be a problem for me, then you don’t know me so well, Susan.”

“How could I forget?” she drawls, rolling her eyes, “Not even the CIA can stop the great Victor von Doom.”

Despite the sarcasm, Sue smiles – actually, genuinely smiles with a humour she hasn’t felt in months. Victor smiles back, clasping her hands in his, interlinking their fingers. She gladly reciprocates, his cool palms quickly warming in their minimal but meaningful embrace.

“Can you control them?”

And that’s when it clicks. She didn’t remove her gloves. “Shit. Sorry.”

Making no attempt at masking his surprise, Victor enquires half-jokingly when she started cursing as Sue pulls off her second glove. She tosses them over her shoulder, irking a raised eyebrow out of him. Realising the implication of her action, Sue’s face flushes. “To an extent.”

He nods, eyebrow sinking barely by the inches. “Invisibility and force field manifestation. Quite the coupling.”

She gives a small chuckle, shaking her head. “Try it in practice rather than theory. I promise you, you won’t be impressed as much as you’ll be frustrated.”

“And the others?” She flinches, and his features swiftly shift to apologetic. “Oh, god, did they –”

“They’ve been weaponised,” she gets out, before she has to hear a word she’d much rather not, “mostly in Middle-Eastern countries - wholly in third-world countries, to keep the mass media in the dark.”

Victor seems impressed. She can’t blame him. Mr. Allen and his cohorts certainly aren’t acting stupid about this. If they were, perhaps she, Ben and Johnny could’ve escaped by now. But what would they do after fleeing? Camping out in the woods or getting a motel room were both out of the question. She bites her bottom lip. Though Sue hates to admit such, for the time being, survival is a better thing to endure in this forsaken place than out there in the unforgiving world - at least, until Victor recovers her phone. “You should go.”

His brows furrow, partly due to offence, partly due to puzzlement. “Why?”

“You need to get those photographs before Mr. Allen shows up and throws you back in prison.”

His irises flash with recognition. Still, he remains appearing immovable. “I reckon I’ve still got plenty of time to spend with you,” Victor slowly responds, turning ever so slightly, “but if you insist...”

One golden eyebrow arches, Singularly-Logical-Minded Susan Storm taking over her instincts. “What would we do? Victor, look, I’ve truly missed you for so long, and I can’t wait for us to be free to love one another without having to look over our shoulders twenty-four-seven, but that can’t happen ‘til –”

He silences her with a kiss, significantly deeper and much more passionate than their first, and she doesn’t complain nor make one movement to show any disapproval. Something at the back of her mind murmurs a telling of where this is going. She has no issue with it – they simply have no time for the act. Pushing him gently off her, Sue smiles forlornly at Victor’s equally unhappy expression. “Sorry. If we had more time, I’d oblige.”

He sighs, eyes spiralling off to the wall on his right. “Time. We never have enough of it.” They spiral back to Sue. “Unless we can control it.”

She tries a laugh that emerges somewhat chokingly, registering his last words as a grim jest. Her gaze, unlike his, does not leave her lover. “What, like God?”

“Like a god.” Victor corrects her, the edge in his voice anything but joking, “Susan, may I ask you something?”

An uncomfortable sensation gnaws at the pit of her stomach. “Define ‘something’.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing these past few months,” he queries, “rather than seeking out you and the others? Do you believe me to have entirely ignored your situation - or something else?”

“I haven’t – and hadn’t – thought about it.” Sue answers frankly, “I was pretty busy dealing with the peril that’s been my livelihood lately.” Putting her hands on her hips, she shoots him a stern look. “Is this the part where you tell me you constructed a machine of your own, so you could receive powers like the rest of us?”

Selfishness. It had always been Victor’s central fault. Sue presses her lips together, suppressing an abrupt anger if her theory is to be the case – if Victor has meddled where he shouldn’t have. Sadly, but truthfully, she won’t be very surprised if she’s correct. A small part of her might mourn the fact he hasn’t changed since they last saw each other. She’ll ignore it with ease.

“Do you remember where I come from?”

The question catches her off-guard. “Where you come from? Latveria - you told me you’d never consider going back.”

“Well, then I broke a promise to myself.” Victor pauses, his expression translating he’s deep in thought. “Do you also remember what I referred to the Latverians as?”

She frowns. The minute space between them is starting to feel a little uncomfortable. “‘The wicked’, ‘witches’. What’s your point?”

“I was being literal,” he affirms, “with those nicknames. The Latverians, my people, we indulge in – ‘magic’, I suppose would be the best term to describe it. Mostly, we practice the elements known as the dark arts.”

Sue’s head spins. “Excuse me?”

“Check the clock, on the wall to your left.” the madman instructs, to which she shakes her head in immovable defiance. “Susan, I don’t want to scare you – that’s the last thing I –”

“Victor,” she warns, stepping back and hitting an ankle against the bed’s steel-strong support, which causes her to wince, “you are doing that quite successfully right now.”

Desperation strikes his face. “Susan, please,” he pleads lightly, “the clock.”

She doesn’t want to look at it. Not to deny him, but rather deny what he is hiding – what she thinks he is hiding. It is one possibility she would despise to be true, yet she finds herself facing the black-rimmed object and its spindly hands of jet, which should define the time around half past seven at night. They are locked at twelve and seven instead. She could unworriedly assume the clock has stopped working if Victor hadn’t pointed it out so ominously. There is something at work here, something far more than a mundane case of broken batteries.

Her head feels hollow all of a sudden. She doesn’t want to know, but... “How?”

He lifts his hands to cup her cheeks. She turns her head away, and he instantaneously drops them. “Would you believe me if I told you it was sorcery?”

Oh, god.

“I’m a scientist,” she says, breath uneven, “I don’t believe in ‘sorcery’, I believe in logic.”

“Not everything can be explained with algorithms.” Victor tells her, “I know that now.”

“And you expect me to accept that?” she challenges him, “To go against every single part of my current beliefs and label you some -”

Her heart rumbles inside her ribcage. “What are you?” she whispers, numb from shaking.

“The same thing you are,” Victor murmurs, “a monster in human skin.”

He draws closer to her, closing his eyes. She shuts hers, needing nothing more than for him to vanish as what will hopefully turn out to be a disturbed dream’s invention. As he speaks, his hot breath ghosts her lips. “There is no place for us in this world, Susan. When I said you’ll be liberated by the government after I release the photographs, I meant not only with me, but to a new location, a better – a superior place. We are more than this world now – we are beyond its pathetic, self-killing state. You have to see that. At least admit you’ve considered the fact.”

“I haven’t,” she states coolly, “I won’t.”

Sue opens her eyes; he opens his. “Everyone has to accept a change eventually. If we didn’t in the past, we wouldn’t have grown as a society. We wouldn’t be at this stage in evolution today. That is the fact of the matter, Victor, and if you can’t accept it, we can’t co-exist as we once wished to.”

“Did I really break your heart so swiftly?” he asks, the hurt in his tone instilling an unpleasant ache in her chest.

“No,” she answers firmly, refusing to allow any aspect of her being to break, “I did that myself.”

In the background, she hears a faint rush across the room. Her eyes flicker to the clock, anticipation burning. She waits. The silence betwixt them draws out, though she heeds it little attention. The soft sounds comprising hers and Victor’s breathing are the only noises occupying the atmosphere. She waits.

The clock’s larger hand clicks forward with a sudden spark of green.

Sue jumps, eyes and mouth lurching wide-open. There they go, the foundations of her beliefs crumbled in a minute. A minute. She can barely believe it. Her powers have enough roots in science to be relatively explained. His are on another plane of existence altogether. Despite herself, she’s in awe.

She senses him making an exit and knows damn well not to leave it like this. Sue may be unable to throw away the statements she’s voiced – not that she’d take them back; standing beside a man who wants the world to decimate before him isn’t the position for her, and she can’t see any circumstances under which it would be – but she can try to communicate she holds no grandstanding hatred towards him.

“Victor!”

He halts, his right hand resting on a door handle. His response: silence.

Her expression turns tough, mirroring the turmoil going on in her mind. She goes to say one thing – then finds it meaningless, essentially stupid, and good God, she hates this, feeling so desperate, standing there mute and embarrassed about her desire for a man who wants the world’s collapse. Phrases manifest in her mind, however, none can reason why she or he need to say more.

He turns to face her properly, causing Sue’s heart rate to jump high, his expression alleviated of anguish and veiled by neutrality. The probability of him being mad at her is as high as her aforementioned internal leap – understandable. Her anger, although subsided, hasn’t quite left. So, they’re angry at each other, yet mournful, remorseful... Sue holds back a heavy sigh. What can they do, really, to fix this sudden seismic shift between them?

It’s as if he’s reading her mind – perhaps he genuinely is – because again, Victor disrupts her depressive drag of thought, moving so fast to press his body against hers, Sue swears he teleported. She barely thinks after this stage, hyper-aware time could be against them, unless Victor has stopped it dead once more whilst readily removing his shirt, an activity he apparently finds effortless with their mouths passionately connected. Finding the back zipper of her containment suit, she yanks it down and breaks off their kiss to multi-task between regaining breath and pulling herself out of its upper half. When the somewhat physically-troubling task is complete, Sue exposes an uninspiring black sports bra. Nonetheless, she sees Victor’s wide-eyed studying bright as day. It makes her heart race, but she can’t afford to act love-stricken, especially not during this little scene. Lust is all what matters now, and a tingling heat in her womanhood affirms that she is wholly, deeply experiencing that overwhelming sensation. And she wants – no, she needs more.

He rakes her in, like she is one of his favourite Renaissance artworks, and Sue chooses to improve his experience significantly by grabbing the suit’s sides that cling persistently to her hips and dragging them down to her ankles. Stepping forwards and out of the oddly attached boots, she’s on full display to him in black underwear and no makeup.

He captures her in an unexpectedly tame kiss, hands on her hips slowly moving towards her breasts before abruptly diverting right down. She gasps, a moan fluttering from her throat in swift succession, having experienced only her fingers pressing against that sweet spot before. He’s talented, knowing very well where to touch and what to do.

Her underwear is removed before she knows it. A single finger slips up her slit, cutting her breath short via short gasp. She’s unexpectedly sensitive, and she sees it in his eyes – he loves it. It pushes gently past her folds and her thighs spasm slightly, drawing a filthy moan from her mouth. It shifts, starts to move, pumping in and out of her with increasing pace. Her moans fall faster, her legs feel number with every sharp, electric-like sensation she’s never felt in this way before. “Victor - oh God, Vic -”

He adds a second and she’s in heaven, utterly surrendered to his incomparable touch. Her head tips back, a guttural groan escaping in the process, and she loses the feeling entirely. He pushes her onto the bed, and she breathes hard and shifts back, the pillows cool against her spine, waiting for him to undress and join her. Sue’s breath latches tight in her throat, eyes all over his sculpted chest when Victor’s pulled his black tee over his head. He tosses it to some far corner of the room – a little dramatic, in her unspoken opinion – and reaches down to unbuckle his belt. Only he stops short, slowly looking up, and smirks. Before she can properly register it, he’s upon her, their mouths connected once more and hands roaming the pale planes composing their chests.

She never wants it to end. Here, in this moment, Sue and Victor are whole and one and nobody can dictate how they should act – what is sensible, what is not – and who they should be – not this, certainly not this. It is the ultimate liberation through physicality, yet it lasts so little time. And it is, as far as she’s concerned, the last time as well. The last time they shall be ‘together’. The last time they are able to engage without bitter feelings. The last time...

She sighs, his teeth softly scraping her throat. Her brain operates as a storm does, sudden and all-consuming. She needs to stop, just for a moment – she needs to stop thinking and live in the now, not fret over the later. So, Sue does.

He joins her in full exposure soon enough. She tests his horizons, teasing him, treating his member with one hand and playfully biting on his bottom lip. His responses deliver her perfect euphoria. His whispers for her twist to hisses, and she asks him if he wants her. He does, clearly. She does not require a verbal confirmation to know that – but she asks for it nonetheless.

“Wicked woman,” he mutters, and she chuckles, a soft sound turning sharp when his lips press up her chest, sending her hot into discovery of a new pleasure. It is a predicted pleasure on her part – nonetheless sensational, Victor taking each of her buds in his mouth with careful vigour, consistent in caressing the other, never leaving one untouched.

She produces little gasps and moans for him, her head splaying back, eyes shutting and skin feeling...his pulse. Her pulse. Their pulses, seeming to have bonded at an exhilarative speed, beat hard against one another and form the grandest pattern she’s had the pleasure of experiencing. She syncs to it – sinks into it – softly speaks his name with a mouth pronouncing it via pop per syllable.

“Susan...”

His nose nudges her neck, awakening her from a pleasure-stricken state and providing her an increased heart rate. He looks beautiful – dare she say, godly – looking down through half-lidded eyes and thick lashes, a light sweat slicking his features and somehow accentuating them. A smile cracks wide open at the corners of her mouth, and he asks in a tone of such fragility: “May I?”

She runs her hands down his arms, the taut muscles defining them exerting tiny twitches beneath her fingertips. “Yes,” she breathes, their gazes interlocking and varied vocabulary beyond her at this stage, “yes, definitely. Yes.”

He leaves her side for a short period, rummaging in his jeans for the appropriate item and, once it is acquired, putting it on. Sue sits up on her elbows, line of sight variating between Victor and the ceiling, breath still uneven and body shuddering from yet clamouring for his touch to return. It’s the only thing on her mind. Nothing else matters but: “Victor.”

He looks over one shoulder at her, his lustful expression most poignant in his darkening irises, which speak a thousand words in silence. He verbalises two: “Patience, Susan.”

Tonight, she seems to have none, gently propelling herself off the bed with a force field, grabbing him by the back of his neck and meshing their mouths. He groans, grunts, hands skipping a skim down her spine and grabbing her ass. 

No talking now. Not the smallest gasp of a lover’s name. Their breathing and strained sounds occupy the atmosphere, her nails digging into his back. He lifts her up, their mouths inexplicably staying connected, and lands them back on the bed. He entwines their fingers, pushes their hands into the sheets, and parts their oral attachment to place his lips against her throat. Simultaneously, his hips anchor against hers and Sue feels the most sudden, sharp sensation. Pain shoots through her pelvis, but she bites her bottom lip, closes her eyes and takes it.

He supports her, one hand finding its place on the small of her back, which arches when he slowly begins. Uncomfortable aches occupy her body initially, causing Sue to squeeze Victor’s shoulders and groan. He holds her softly, with such care and love, she’s utterly infatuated. Her subconscious sounds out logic and reality, drawing a sentence from her that she shouldn’t speak.

“Victor – I love you.”

He stops his movements, just as the aches start to dissipate. Overtly self-aware, Sue prays she hasn’t ruined what should be nothing more than a mutually self-indulgent act. Victor’s eyes sink into hers, searching for a truth to her words. Honestly, she isn’t quite sure herself how true or how impulsive they were. Fortunately, he does not dawn over them, swiftly bringing their lips together again, passionately embraced as he resumes moving inside her. He increases his pace in accordance with her tighter clutch upon his shoulders, breaking away from their kiss to breathe heavy and make noises matching in need with Sue’s.

He speeds up as they hit a higher pleasure point, sweat-slicked skin slapping, exhaling accentuated, both competing in loudness but losing to the rush of heartbeats. She wonders why they didn’t do this earlier – come together on quite possibly the highest level of human connection – and wishes they could do it again. Though the chances of such seem bleak, she will always have hope - hope he’ll realise the sheer error of his new world views so that they, at least to some degree, can love without complication.

Sue throws her head back, gasping sharply, as him being inside her becomes inexplicably better. Her walls tighten around his member, and they moan unashamedly. He pushes his face into her shoulder; she digs her nails deeper, deeper...

They hit their peaks relatively in unison – Victor slightly before Sue, her name grated between clenched teeth, his name screamed so loud, neither can doubt somebody heard it. He rolls off her following a few last thrusts, and neglects to kiss her, something she doesn’t pick up on coming down from her high. In fact, Sue takes a little while to notice Victor’s leaving.

Lying on her side, eyelids having fluttered shut, she abruptly acknowledges the lack of a presence beside her. Sitting up, Sue’s on high alert seeing that the door is opening. A brief moment passes before she realises it’s opening from the inside, by Victor’s hand.

“I’ll get those photographs out to the world,” he utters, stopping halfway through the door, “what you do next is entirely by your will. Goodbye, Susan.”

He does not wait for her to respond, disappearing phantom-like and leaving her to a closing door and an empty room fitted with a fresh memory. Perhaps she’ll regret it in time, for various, differing reasons. Perhaps she’ll wish she had tried to convince him against his ideology. Whatever happens, for the time being, Sue Storm is satisfied.

A unique pattern traces its way through the government facility now. And its roots, every single one, they all lead back to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if the ending felt a bit rushed! (": This fic honestly got to the point where I really wanted to just finish it. Hope you enjoyed reading regardless, and please feel free to leave feedback! ❤


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